n n n ‘. concat(e. i18n. t(“search. voice. recognition_retry”),’n
Every parent knows that raising children is expensive, especially in the early years when they temporarily outgrow clothes or toys, leaving parents in a never-ending cycle of buying new parts while old ones are slightly worn or worn.
Enter Kidsy, a new Chicago-based e-commerce startup that aims to provide consumers with more discounts on baby and children’s products through partnerships with major brands, retailers, and clearance corporations for their overstocking and returns. At the same time, you can help prevent overstocked and clearance items such as children’s clothing from ending up in landfills, which is obviously not smart for the environment.
Kidsy doesn’t just focus on clothing. It also sells new and open-box (i. e. , new but returned) parts, such as strollers, car seats, toys, equipment, nursery furniture, and “other baby essentials. “
The company’s founders are Indian-born former business journalist Shraysi Tandon and Turkish-born software engineer Sinan Sari, who also co-founded SaaS startup Cuboh (a startup that just sold to competitor ChowNow), subsidized through Y Combinator. The two men teamed up in April 2022 to launch the company, which recently closed what Tandon described as an “oversubscribed” $1 million pre-seed funding.
“Almost all major stores, such as Amazon, Macy’s, Target, Kohl’s, Walmart, and Bloomingdales, don’t meet visitor returns because they require too much capital and labor for them,” Tandon, CEO of Kidsy, told TechCrunch. These pieces are then shipped to other countries that acquire liquidated U. S. goods or are destroyed in landfills. “
Image credits: Children’s
Investors were attracted by the company’s early successes. Since exiting its beta phase in September 2023, Kidsy has managed to make $1 million in annualized profit in January, just four months later, according to Tandon.
New York-based Impellent Ventures led the funding of Kidsy, which also included participation from Hustle Fund, Everywhere VC, The Fund Midwest, and Responsably Ventures. Angel investors have also invested in the round, adding Jenny Fleiss, wife of Initialized and co-founder of Rent. the Runway, Jason Robins, founder/CEO of DraftKings, Mike Salguero, founder of ButcherBox, Reilly Brennan, managing spouse of Trucks VC, and Sanuk Tandon, co-founder of Kalibrr.
Tandon’s path to creating Kidsy began when she founded her own media production company after working as a reporter for Bloomberg TV and ABC News. Through this company, she spent three years making an award-winning feature-length documentary about child labor in global supply chains. During that time, he became aware of the overstock that existed in the U. S. The U. S. Department of Homeland Security has been able to address the issue of “all the origin chain issues that stores are facing. “
He also learned that liquidation and returns amount to $761 billion in the U. S. In the U. S. , there is an annual increase in the number of U. T
But it was when Tandon was pregnant with her first child that she decided to become a “savvy” customer and buy clearance baby products instead of paying full price. That’s when he saw the hole in the market and wondered, “Where’s the TJ Maxx?”Or Burlington for all baby and children’s items?
While there are many e-commerce corporations on clearance and overstocking, there are few that specialize solely in children’s gadgets, or focus more on the used parenting gadget market.
While she was still pregnant, Tandon went about her business.
When she first started fundraising while pregnant, Tandon said she was “nervous constantly reading statistics similar to the hardships for female founders, the dominant ‘boys’ club’ that existed in the venture capital world, and also the hardships in general for pregnant women. It will grow in 2024, compared to just two years ago.
“It didn’t need to be a statistic, so I hid my pregnancy,” Tandon told TechCrunch.
Then she would “never do that again” and now tells venture capital companies right away that she is a mother of a baby. Venture capital firms that think it’s a challenge “aren’t the right investors for me. “” she said.
Investors, Tandon said, are excited to back a kids’ TJ Maxx, noting that the store outperformed the S
“We ship those parts directly to our Nebraska warehouse, inspect them, sort them, and then sell them, rather than on consignment or through a third-party logistics provider,” he said.
Most of them are new and unused. About 10% is used carefully, and Kidsy sells it too.
Kidsy already has tens of thousands of customers, according to Tandon. The company earns a “participation rate” on each and every item it sells. Its percentage varies depending on the brands and categories it sells, but averages 35%, according to Tandon. Tandón.
Tandon is that there are many contests that promote children’s items.
But investors like David Brown, managing partner at Impellent Ventures, Kidsy “solves several very genuine problems for parents and brings innovation to a robust market. “
“Yes, the be offer is less expensive than others and has environmental benefits, but it is the way they adapt to parents’ conversion desires that has differentiated and will continue to set Kidsy apart. “
Kidsy plans to use its new capital to fulfill classic recruitment expansion desires to expand its 12-person team and add more partners. It also plans to integrate synthetic intelligence and device learning into its offering “to increase operational efficiency. “
For now, the startup is targeting the U. S. market, though Tandon believes Kidsy could expand into any country that “has lenient retail return policies and brands struggle to manage their returns and excess inventory. “